Chapter 12
Remy stared at the text in his apartment, his eyes glowing gold as the Foresight activated.
He saw exactly what Indigo had planned, saw her standing in that abandoned classroom in lingerie, saw the trap she'd laid.
He saw the possible futures branching. If he didn't go, she'd claim he'd stood her up, spread rumours.
If he went and fell for it, she'd have him hooked like all the others.
But he also saw a third option. A way to end this game permanently.
"This is going to be unpleasant," Silas's ghost observed, appearing beside him. "The girl is damaged, Remy.
Broken in ways that have nothing to do with you. You could simply ignore her."
"I could," Remy agreed. "But then she'll just move on to some other poor guy and destroy him instead.
It's better to end this now. Sharply. Completely."
"Be careful that you don't become the monster you're trying to fight," Silas warned. "Cruelty, even in service of a lesson, still damages the soul."
"I'll be careful," Remy promised, though he wasn't entirely sure he was telling the truth.
He arrived at the arts building at 8 PM, when most classes had ended and the hallways were deserted.
Room 237 was on the second floor, an old classroom that had been converted into a storage space years ago, rarely used except by students looking for privacy.
The door was unlocked. He pushed it open.
The room was lit by a single lamp someone had brought in, creating an ambience of dramatic shadows.
Indigo stood in the centre of the room, and she had gone to an extreme that surprised even him despite the Foresight warning.
She'd shed her clothes until she was wearing only expensive lingerie, black lace that probably cost more than most people's designer pieces.
Her purple hair fell artfully across her shoulders, her indigo eyes smoky with makeup, her body positioned to catch the light from the most flattering angles.
She looked like something from a perfume commercial. Perfect. Sculpted. Artificial.
"No man has ever turned me down, Remy," she whispered, stepping into the dim light with the deliberate grace of a runway walk.
Every movement was calculated and practised. "Don't you want me? Everyone wants me."
She expected him to break. He expected his resolve to crumble.
Expected the stammering, the staring, the capitulation that every other man had given her.
Instead, Remy didn't blush. He didn't stutter. He didn't even look particularly interested.
He looked at her with cold, piercing disgust that cut deeper than any insult ever could.
His golden eyes held nothing but contempt, the kind of expression someone might wear when examining something unpleasant they'd found on the bottom of their shoe.
"You think your body is a currency that can buy anyone," Remy said, his voice flat and clinical, like a doctor delivering a terminal diagnosis.
"That if you're pretty enough, naked enough, available enough, people will just fall at your feet and give you whatever you want. Validation. Attention. Power."
He took a step closer, and Indigo instinctively backed up, suddenly aware that she was nearly naked in a room with a man who was looking at her like she was trash.
"But to me," Remy continued, his voice never rising above conversational volume, which somehow made it worse, "you're just someone who finds joy in other people's pain.
You're a collector of broken hearts, a tourist in other people's misery. You break boys because it makes you feel powerful.
After all, destroying someone is easier than actually connecting with them."
Indigo opened her mouth to protest, to defend herself, but no words came out.
No one had ever spoken to her this way. No one had ever seen through her so completely.
"You're not beautiful, Indigo," Remy said, and each word landed like a physical blow. "You're hollow. You're an empty shell wrapped in expensive clothes and makeup, performing a role you think beautiful women are supposed to play.
There's nothing inside but need, the need for validation, need for attention, need to prove you have power over men because you don't actually have power over anything else in your life."
Tears formed in her indigo eyes, smearing her carefully applied mascara. Her lip trembled.
"Get dressed," Remy said, his voice softer now but no less firm.
"Go home. And maybe spend some time figuring out who you actually are underneath all this..." he gestured vaguely at her lingerie, her hair, her makeup, her performance."
Because right now? Right now, you're just sad. And I don't fuck with sad."
He turned and walked out, leaving her shivering in the silence, standing half-naked in an abandoned classroom, crying for the first time in years.
The door closed behind him with a soft click that sounded like a silenced gunshot.
It was the first time in Indigo Sinclair's life that a male had rejected her completely, had seen her at what she thought was her most irresistible, and found her wanting.
The shock hit her like a physical blow, doubling her over like someone had punched her in the stomach.
She sank to the floor, her perfect posture collapsing, her carefully constructed facade crumbling into pieces.
She cried.....ugly crying, the kind that ruined makeup and made your face splotchy, the kind she hadn't allowed herself since she was twelve years old and decided that vulnerability was weakness.
Her reasoning and pride were shattered.
Every assumption she'd built her identity on that she was irresistible, that men were simple creatures who could be manipulated with beauty and sex, that her worth came from her ability to break hearts—all of it was suddenly questionable.
If she wasn't the girl who could have anyone she wanted, then who was she?
Over the next week, Indigo became a ghost of herself. She cancelled a major modelling gig with a New York agency, a shoot that could have been her big break because she couldn't summon the confidence to perform.
She stopped attending her entourage's gatherings, stopped posting on social media, and stopped performing the role of Indigo Sinclair, Heartbreaker Extraordinaire.
Her friends didn't know what to do with her. They'd never seen her like this, quiet, withdrawn, uncertain.
They tried to rally her spirits with the usual tactics, talking about how hot she was, how Remy was probably gay, how she could have any other guy on campus.
But none of it worked because Indigo had glimpsed something in Remy's eyes that terrified her: the truth.
She was hollow. She was performing. She was empty.
And now she didn't know how to be anything else.
On Tuesday morning, in Econ 301, three very different girls sat in the same classroom, each processing her own complicated relationship with the golden-eyed stranger who'd disrupted their carefully ordered worlds.
Lyra sat in the front row, dressed less formally than usual, just jeans and a nice blouse.
Her "armour" partially set aside, sneaking glances at Remy and blushing when he caught her looking.
She was still hoping on their Saturday dinner, simultaneously terrified and excited in equal measure.
Nyx sat in her usual isolated corner, surrounded by textbooks, but for the first time, she wasn't actually reading them.
She was thinking about what Remy had said about grades and happiness and freedom, thoughts that felt dangerous and liberating at the same time.
And Indigo sat in the back, she who had never sat anywhere but the front where everyone could see her, wearing oversized clothes and no makeup.
Her purple hair pulled back in a simple ponytail, trying to figure out who she was when she wasn't performing.
Three school belles, each beautiful in their own way, each broken in their own way, each starting to heal because of a boy who'd been broken himself and remade into something stronger.
Remy felt their eyes on him and activated his Foresight, seeing the threads of possibility stretching out before him.
He saw futures where Lyra opened her heart, where Nyx found freedom, where Indigo became real instead of hollow.
But he also saw darker futures. Complications. Jealousy. Hearts are breaking in different ways.
"You're playing with fire," Silas's voice whispered in his mind. "Three beautiful women, each damaged in her own way, each looking to you for salvation.
That's a dangerous burden to carry, boy."
"I know," Remy thought back. "But I didn't ask for this. I just wanted to stop being a victim. I just wanted to be strong enough that no one could hurt me again."
"And now you're strong enough to hurt others," Silas observed. "The question is, will you?"
Remy didn't have an answer for that. He just knew that he'd been holding up his promise of a Saturday outing, and with it, his first real date with Lyra.
And after that... after that, the future was uncertain, even with eyes that could see tomorrow.
Professor Henderson started the lecture, and Remy forced himself to focus on supply curves and market equilibrium.
But in the back of his mind, he was already planning, already seeing, already preparing for whatever came next.
The game had changed. He was no longer the victim.
But he wasn't sure yet what he'd become instead.